Before Eleven Madison Park closed indefinitely on March 15, 2020, I trained to become one of the restaurant’s last Kitchen Servers. For 10 days I studied the elaborate ecosystems of both the dining room and the kitchen. I learned traffic patterns, course spiels, how to spell garde manger, and to remember to say “oui” after being addressed by chef. Days 1-7 I put these practices into good practice, while Day 8 readied itself to throw me in the kitchen.

All Kitchen Servers spent their eighth day shadowing chefs to gain understanding, empathy, and most importantly, respect for everything that moves and shakes in the kitchen. The dining room and the kitchen had a very complex and at times effortless-looking relationship upheld by rhythm, intention and timing, and it was important to the management team that each and every Kitchen Server appreciated that. So for my first three hours in the kitchen, I helped a commis chef arrange shingled razor clams with kitchen tweezers onto a potato tart that would later be plated alongside a butter-poached Maine lobster tail, and finished tableside with a sea urchin sauce. I made the above gif to help illustrate what the razor clam placement process looked like, minus the tweezers and the unexpected back pain.

Photographed above is the complete dish and was course no. 5 of 10 on Eleven Madison Park’s Winter 2020 Tasting Menu.